Brian and Lindsey Young, who were terminated from their teaching positions at PUHS in May due to a staff reduction, met with PRT in June to talk about their experience there. The Youngs painted a bleak picture of the work environment at the high school, describing it as a stressful atmosphere in which staff felt intimidated by school principal and superintendent Denise Blake.
Since then we have talked to others to see how they felt about Blake. We learned that some people believe that she is doing an excellent job, and others are frustrated and sometimes angry with her style of management. Some say that in trying to shape PUHS to fit a system more suited to large schools, she has adversely affected the spirit of openness and positive exchange that used to exist among staff and in the classroom.
Her supporters remember the state of the schools before she took the helm, and they are thrilled with what she has accomplished. They say that her management is effective and has brought about significant changes in the physical plant, the curriculum, and discipline. They say she works very hard and is well organized, and most are willing to overlook occasional reports of her no-nonsense style of dealing with staff.
Fred Sang, chairman of the high school governing board, points out that “change is really hard. People are used to a certain pace and this has happened fast. People get stressed.” He knows that there are people in town and at the schools who are finding it hard to adjust to Blake’s style. He says in a small town like Patagonia, he knows most of these people, and it’s not easy to see the community divided. However, Sang, who has been on the board before and remembers how run down the schools were four years ago, says that the community needs to adapt to this new way of doing things.
But if the community needs to adapt, then so does the governing board. If the board continues to disregard the concerns of those faculty or community members who are critical of Superintendent Blake, they are only contributing to continued division in the community. Those criticisms, whether real or imagined, are affecting the relationship between the town and the school, and they need to be addressed.
When the board turned over complete management of the schools to Denise Blake, they overlooked an important piece of the puzzle. As policy now stands, a staff member who wishes to file a complaint against Blake is first directed to Principal Blake. If there is no resolution, the complaint can then be brought before the superintendent (in this case also Blake.)
Only if this second step fails to resolve the complaint does the staff member get to be heard by the school governing board. If he or she does manage to be heard by the board, as Gilbert Quiroga has experienced [see story on page 4], the Board can only listen. The school board states that its role is to oversee policy and that Blake is responsible for personnel matters. Thus, if someone attempts to convey a complaint to a board member, they are advised to direct their complaint to the superintendent.
This happened last year to Lindsey Young. She says she felt that Blake had behaved abusively toward her, and she wanted to report it. Then she learned that she could only report the abuse to Blake, and after consulting a lawyer, decided not to file the grievance. A system that requires our schools’ teachers to file a grievance against authority by submitting it to that authority is not serving their best interests.
There has to be a simple, straightforward way to open an avenue of communication for staff who wish to express concerns in confidence, and a means by which the board, or some other impartial entity, can respond to those concerns in whatever way it sees as fair. The school board cannot hide behind all its regulations and ignore those staff members who have a grievance against Blake. It is unethical, and it leads to an atmosphere of mistrust and frustration in the community.
Vesting all the power in one person, without checks and balances, is not a change for the better.
A Primer on Grievance Policy
The same basic principles apply to all grievance policies:
1.An employee files a grievance, orally or in writing
2.The matter is taken up by an impartial party, or, if the conflict is with the supervisor, by a person at the next level in the institution.
3.A decision is rendered, and, if unacceptable to the grievant, an appeal process is initiated which is usually final.
The fundamental requirement for a successful policy is the impartiality of the third party, the person or persons considering the facts and making the decision as to whether the grievance is justified and what the outcome should be. Maintaining the privacy of everyone is critical.
Often there is an informal period prior to entering into a formal grievance process where the two concerned parties may discuss their difference in counseling sessions in hopes of working out a compromise. A decision must be made in a timely fashion, according to a timeline set forth in the policy. If the decision is in favor of the grievant, there must be a mechanism in place to rectify the conditions that led to the complaint, or the process is meaningless. Also, there should be an appeals process in place.
Elizabeth Zinn Ervin, retired Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, University of Arizona